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Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

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Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But AB 645 is designed to punish and deter rather than compensate, which creates a genuine constitutional vulnerability under California's Article I, Section 16 jury trial guarantee. The structural problem is that revenue goes to program costs and traffic calming, not to anyone harmed by speeding, which makes the fines punitive in character under any substance-over-label analysis. The lack of DMV points and criminal…

Everything you've said applies to parking tickets too. You can't prove that the owner parked the vehicle. Tha owner is ultimately civily liable if the vehicle is parked in a way that it shouldn't be. Extending that same civil liability to the active operation, as opposed to only the consequences of active operation, seems perfectly reasonable.

The key difference is a parking ticket isn't $500.

Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Presumably you would not make it possible to pay off student loans by repeatedly violating a red light I lack the context and knowledge to understand how this would work, but I am curious (enough to ask but not enough to google it, admittedly).

The joke being that if your net worth is negative the fine will be negative.

Man, I missed that by a mile. Thanks. :D

Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#563
post #333
post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's red-light running. But I don't think even rich people will just breeze through every red and pay the fines; it'll add up quickly.

Yea, I think the chance of death will encourage them not to run every red light making mass surveillance unnecessary. The money is a noop for the rich in thus case.

If that is the argument, then we should just drop enforcement of traffic rules alltogether. Because people don't want to have an accident?

But driving reckless and having a big well protected car helps of course, so everyone speeding would want even bigger and better armored cars.

Those daring to drive light vecicles or even bicycles, screw them?

Here in germany we managed to have automated red light tickets, without saving video at all btw. Just a picture (or multiple) of the incident. The picture is tied to the traffuc lights logic so knows when red light was on.

Now I am not really a fan of them, but they do work without mass surveillance.

Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#564
post #545
post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My daycare fines parents $5 _per minute_ of lateness.

Three hundred dollars per hour? How is that acceptable? Certainly there's some sort of maximum or grace period?

How is being late acceptable?

Let's say you have a job interview. You're 5min late, so they either don't hire you, or the receptionist says the interviewer is now not available. Are you now due the salary, because you being this late 5min cost you a lot of money?

If you in a private contract reject the terms of paying $5 per minute late, well then the other party now knows you plan to be late a lot, so they'll be glad if you take your business elsewhere.

Keeping people from being able to go home after their workday, effectively forced overtime, is incredibly disrespectful. And even if "it's not your fault", you are the only one that could have prevented it. So incentives should be in place that you don't. $5 per minute sounds fair.

If you force me to stay late for a full hour you'd BETTER pay me triple digits. But in this case the $300 for an hour may have to be shared among several people.

Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#565
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consistent, low-impact enforcement is better at preventing unwanted behavior than the rare and severe but also capricious enforcement performed by human police. It can also give permission for unwanted behavior. Cf. the Haifa study, where the rate of late pickups increased when daycares added a fine. One explanation is the fine turned a complex moral obligation into an ordinary financial transaction.

The Haifa daycare study can’t be used to extrapolate much. They fined parents (IIRC) ~$3 per late pickup. Rerun the study with a $300 fine and let’s see how it pans out. It’s an interesting finding, but that then people take it to mean that fines don’t work (no matter their size) is insane.

[deleted]

Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#566
post #513
post #198

After reading the 21 page order, I do tend to agree with the judge The judge frames the red light camera scheme as a revenue generating scheme, not a public safety measure. Additionally, "A distinctive feature of the statutory scheme is its assignment of guilt to the registered owner rather than the driver of the vehicle". and "If there are multiple registered owners, the citation is issued to the 'first' registered…

So is there an alternative or we'll just accept we can't punish bad driving?

Two paths:

Higher quality cameras equipped with facial recognition connected to a database to issue a ticket to the correct person (driver), or

Hire more traffic officers to sit at traffic intersections to catch red light offenders, which will scale in cost by the size of the city, so

Pick your poison

Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#567
post #198

After reading the 21 page order, I do tend to agree with the judge The judge frames the red light camera scheme as a revenue generating scheme, not a public safety measure. Additionally, "A distinctive feature of the statutory scheme is its assignment of guilt to the registered owner rather than the driver of the vehicle". and "If there are multiple registered owners, the citation is issued to the 'first' registered…

The judge is right, of course the solution is not to ban the cameras, but to place them in a position that will capture the driver.

Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#568
post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is there an alternative or we'll just accept we can't punish bad driving?

Two paths: Higher quality cameras equipped with facial recognition connected to a database to issue a ticket to the correct person (driver), or Hire more traffic officers to sit at traffic intersections to catch red light offenders, which will scale in cost by the size of the city, so Pick your poison

So this has been a thing in Germany since forever. The driver must pay the penalty, not the owner. So what they do is take a picture of the driver and send this to the owner. They have to either pay up, or state the name of the person who drove. If the driver claims that they did not drive and do not know the person on the picture (and if a cursory investigation fails, not sure how much time the authorities will invest in finding the driver), they will be told to record all rides with that vehicle from now on. If they fail to do that, I guess they get a greater penalty the next time, I'm not sure.

So yeah, in some cases you might get out of it by feigning ignorance, but it seems to be a sensible compromise between facial recognition and giving up.

Re: Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional

#569
post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't the same logic apply to parking tickets?

No. Parking is leaving your possession somewhere and should apply to the registered owner. It is not illegal to own a car that someone else used to run a red light.

Who is leaving your possession is just as relevant as who is driving your possession?
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